buried at sea
by winter machine
Summary: Brief, dark one-shot in which they cross the country to honor Mark's wishes for a burial at sea, Amelia is still reeling from the loss of her baby (or that's what she'll say if anyone asks why she did it), and Addison is hit by the fallout (as she often is). Set just after Mark's canon death.


**A/N:** Mark is dead. Amelia is (somewhat) sober. Addison and Jake are caught in the crossfire. If you like my older, darker stories, and/or the darker side of Amelia in general, it might be for you. I may not leave this up very long, but I was curious if anyone still thinks about this dynamic.

 _buried at sea_

He wants a burial at sea - rather ungenerously, she thinks this must have been one of those embarrassing romantic-macho notions dreamed up after a few too many scotches. He's not a sailor and what is _the_ _sea_ anyway. But death makes people pay attention all of a sudden, so they do what they want this time and trek across the frozen spring to the empty Hamptons house that feels as un-lived-in as the marriage of the couple who bought it.

 _I call the blue room,_ Amy says, and leaves the ashes for the others while she showers, window open so the cold will slice into her skin. She doesn't come out again until the others are sleeping. Then she runs her fingers along the windowsill facing the sea - it's the slightest bit dusty. Addison will be displeased.

Mark wouldn't have cared about the dust. He liked the house in Amagansett; Derek didn't. Addison liked the house but she loved Derek. Amelia finds it impossible to think of the mess of the three of them without the other - no emotion or memory is its own without running it by the others too. A rhyming triangle, a nursery jingle. Mark's bad. Derek's mad. Addison's sad. And Amy? Amy's glad. No, Amy's _had_ enough of this, gulping _glad_ in a pill, swigging it from a bottle. Turns out the beach house is like everything else sober, when she's used to it high.

It sucks.

"What?"

"I said it sucks." She hadn't realized she'd been speaking out loud. Or that anyone had been listening. Jake's in the doorway, tired hooded eyes.

"It's late."

"So?"

"You're drunk."

She shrugs.

"You're an addict."

"Stop - saying things." Vaguely she shakes the mostly empty bottle toward him.

"Look, let me help you to bed-"

She snorts.

"Amelia, come on-"

She shakes him off.

"You want to get some sleep before tomorrow. Mark-"

Mark wanted to be buried at sea; she wanted him buried with her. Over her. In her. _Mark._

"Amelia-"

" _Don't_ call me that."

Jake's brow quirks. "Uh, Doctor Shepherd-"

"Forget it." She's about to drain the bottle when he takes it from her.

"I know this is hard-"

He doesn't know anything. He's never been here before, he's never been anywhere. He's a cardboard cutout, a reward for Addison, a blank slate and she can project all the best parts of Derek and Mark. Doesn't Addison deserve that, after all she's been through, an empty shell of nice? An indistinguishable sack of loyal? A shiny veneer of _good_?

He puts a hand on her arm, it's large and warm, and she feels something akin to pity because he has no idea. No idea of her and none of Addie and he knows nothing about this house, these people, the triangles and rhymes of their history. If he did he'd run. Or cry. Or drink.

She takes the bottle back from him and drains it.

He doesn't protest, just gestures vaguely at the house. "Nice place."

Of course it's nice. Addison chose the decorator herself. None of the renters over the years have changed it at all.

"Did, uh, did he like it here?"

She doesn't want Jake talking about him. Jake doesn't fit into this picture. He's not in the triangle, the square or the octagon. His feelings don't rhyme. His fingers don't move her.

"Amelia-"

She doesn't tell him not to call her that, this time. Instead, she pushes the bottle between his lips and then she drinks from his mouth.

 _Buried at_ _sea_

She's fourteen and in pain. She's fifteen and high, thighs spreading. She's sixteen in rehab, fantasizing fingers and fucking and _feelings_. She's seventeen and making it all up. She's eighteen and remembering.

Nothing arouses her like a lie. Nothing feels as right as wrong; it's been too long since she's felt this, the heavy-lidded power of making someone else stupid for once. Of swallowing someone else's bad decisions. She thinks of the baby sleeping upstairs, head pillowed in a soft crib. Thinks of the baby she buried, the space where his head should have been. His missing parts were obvious; hers are more subtle. She doesn't know what it is within people that makes them say _no_ or _stop_ or that identifies _too far_ before it becomes _too late._

Jake isn't the type to do this, he's one of the good ones, plodding and loyal, committed. Amy was committed once, a bug on her back, but she's back and traps whatever loyalty he has between her thighs. Is it a power play if she's impotent, revenge without a crime? This is natural. This is breathing. She hears the sound of the sea. She hears his breath in her ear, wet and coming in waves. He will hate himself and he will hate her and all that hatred will grow inside of her like a formless baby. She needs it to feed on. It will nurse her. So she shoves him against the marble kitchen island, tears off her own robe, makes the hanging copper pots bang metallically against one another.

She's nineteen and in the library. She's twenty and in the lab. She's twenty-one in a tangle of metal. She's twenty-two and Nancy walks in. _Gotcha._ She's twenty-three and lying to her therapist.

It's loud - they're too loud. Maybe she'll wake people up but she doesn't care, no one wakes up when she needs them to. Mark's gone. Another dead Shepherd baby marked on the chalkboard. No one listens to _wake up_ , no one listens at all. She bites his neck, he closes his eyes. Fine - let him pretend. Amy wouldn't know how to fuck someone who could face her anyway. She does it best with eyes screwed shut, face turned the other way, ears plugged with loathing.

She's twenty-five and he's inside her. She's twenty-six and she engulfs him with her mouth. She's twenty-seven and he tastes the same. She's twenty-eight and he cries for someone else. She's twenty-nine and pretending.

He stops with a start and her head bangs one of those copper pots. She welcomes the brief gong of pain but hisses _what_ and then she sees it:

Addison is in the doorway, hair loose on her shoulders, moonlight forgiving of her aging face.

"Addison, listen-" Jake is pushing Amy away, struggling to cover himself. Amy doesn't bother. She stands half naked, breasts still swollen from pregnancy. Nothing to hide because everything to hide, is that what they say?

Addison doesn't even look that surprised. She was born for betrayal; it's just another silver spoon in her mouth.

"It's not what it looks like."

Amy smirks into his shoulder - Jake is still _talking_ , as if he's part of the equation, and is that the best he can do?

What she wants to say is that nothing is what it looks like because _nothing_ is what everything looks like. Addison stares at her, not speaking, breasts moving almost imperceptibly as she breathes. Even Addie has to breathe. Even now. _Sorry_ is their currency but she pockets it instead, feels the heft of him wilt against her. Whatever she needed from his is gone. She has nothing to say so she speaks this time:

 _Addie,_ she says. _It was him. He came on to me._

The lie is salty in her mouth, like metal. Like money. Addison's lips quirk around a word she doesn't say and Amy tastes a tear that feels like dust. _Nothing is what everything looks like._

She's thirty and walks in on them. She's thirty-one and the baby's dead. She's thirty-two and everyone's across the country. She's thirty-three and fucking her own fingers, remembering. She's thirty-four and he's pinned her to a wall. She's thirty-five and the truth hurts. She's thirty-six and another baby's dead. She's thirty-seven and he's dead too.

 _Burial_ _at_ _sea_ _._

They shake fistfuls of ashes into the Sound the next day, squinting eyes behind dark glasses. Mark wanted this and so they give it to him. Derek's here but his eyes aren't. Amy's hangover-heavy, head pounding. Jake's contrite; he knows he doesn't belong. Amy casts a sidelong glance at Addison, ramrod stiff on the seat, gloved hand inches from Jake's. Amy makes a note to call her lawyer when she gets back to LA, make sure her will is in order.

 _What are your wishes, Amy?_

 _I want to be buried alive._

When the lawyer laughs she'll tell him to shut up, that she's already started. And it's already too late.

...


End file.
